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Lafourche schools tied up in multimillion-dollar lawsuit

Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 6:42 p.m.

Last Modified: Wednesday, December 19, 2012 at 6:42 p.m.

The Lafourche Parish school system is involved in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit involving the recruitment of Filipino teachers to Louisiana under financially abusive circumstances but isn’t likely responsible for wrongdoing, attorneys said.

The lawsuit claims the firm charged the teachers an initial fee of $5,000, well more than a year’s salary in the Philippines. After the teachers had already paid that amount, the company began adding other mandatory charges totaling $16,000.

To pay the fees, the company set up the teachers with private lenders charging interest rates as high as 40 percent, said Jim Knoepp, an attorney with the Southern Policy Law Center. The firm then forced the teachers to sign a contract to pay 10 percent of their second year’s salary, threatening teachers who protested with financial penalties and deportation.

The Southern Policy Law Center and the American Federation of Teachers prosecuted the case on the teachers’ behalf.

“The practices involved in this case — labor contracts signed under duress and other arrangements reminiscent of indentured servitude — are things that should have no place in 21st century America,” AFT president Randi Weingarten said in a statement.

Knoepp said the teachers had a “terrible choice” — either pay the steadily skyrocketing fees or bow out and struggle to pay off existing debts with a weak salary in the Philippines.

A federal jury in Los Angeles found the arrangement was illegal, forcing Universal Placement to pay the teachers $4.5 million and nullifying much of their contracts.

Knoepp said the Lafourche school system, which received some of the teachers, will most likely not face any kind of sanctions because it was unintentionally caught up in the exploitation.

“It’s very likely that Lafourche had no idea what was going on behind the scenes,” he said.

Lafourche schools spokesman Floyd Benoit said the school district had no idea of the sketchy circumstances that lead the teachers to Lafourche.

“This is something we got caught up in unintentionally,” Benoit said. “We’re doing everything to make sure that we aren’t involved in anything wrong.”

Most of the teachers were originally brought to East Baton Rouge Parish, Knoepp said. But delays in processing the teachers’ work visas meant more than 100 of them went to various school systems throughout the state — including Lafourche.

Knoepp said East Baton Rouge Parish could face trouble with the U.S. Department of Labor because there is evidence the school system knew of the fees but turned a blind eye.

“The law says that if you are paying people on a salary scale, then you have to pay the initial recruitment fees if you’re going to bring in employees,” Knoepp said. “The recruiters knew the school district didn’t have the money to pay their initial fee.”

Staff Writer Matthew Albright can be reached at 448-7635 or at matthew.albright@dailycomet.com.

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